All in Your Dreams Essay

Professor’s note: This is Essay #2 and refers to one of the books we have read.

Ray Ren

English 1A / Professor Brandler

September 11, 2018

Essay #2

Professor’s note: It was alright for students to talk about themselves for this essay.

From Fighting Alone to Living Accompanied

Eagle, the king of the sky, represents a state of being with reverence and awe, and it is an emblem of freedom – the freedom that my U.S. Army uniform and I are both fighting for in this chaotic era. I fight alone like the eagle flies alone in the borderless sky which reflects my final destiny, fighting in the war. The eagle is magnificently proud, and he shrieks and overlooks the everything beyond the earth, just like how I proudly declare that I will serve the country and put the national safety above all of my self-interests. In this specific scene of my dream, I have always been surrounded with the feeling of loneliness and helplessness, and this dream has been played repeatedly especially when I am drunk or medically put to sleep. By reading the book of It’s All in Your Dreams, written by Kelly Sullivan Walden, who is not only an author of seven books but also a dream expert, a certified clinical hypnotherapist, an inspirational speaker, and a radio host (Walden Back Cover),I learned how to feng shui my dream zone (Walden 27) to get rid of the bad feelings from my dream and enjoy the victory of the war which has been fought for hundreds of years in my virtual dream combat zone.

The feng shui steps that Walden mentions in her book teaches us, “to create a dream sanctuary, let your five senses guide you as you use the following simple feng shui tips: Sight, Sound, Smell, Touch and Taste” (Walden 29 & 30). In order to alter the path of my “repeated nightmare”, a bold attempt of these feng shui tips is crucial to change my dream. Before I tried the feng shui tips and declaration meditation, my dream was like I was at an opened wilderness zone, and I felt that I have been in the prone position for thousands of years already. I could not move my body, and I did not want to move it either because I was in a war that anything moves might be killed by hidden enemies. At the moment, I was fearless for death but terrified for loneliness and helpless. One eagle flew above me, as though I were overlooked by him as I was the only men in this world. Everything was so real because I could even feel the elements of surrounding environment by my five senses. There were some burning and gunpowder smells in the air, and by smelling of those, I smelt the death is zooming to me. Death combines passion and furious that I was excited to taste but loathed to compromise. Because we were made by dust and to dust we will return (Holy Bible, Genesis 3:19), I would express death as the taste of salt. I spat out the salty sand and dust, and then they returned to the ground immediately, and my sight moved to the empty bullet shells which were all over the ground. I picked up one cold hard empty cartridge, and then I felt I became to a wicked king who is the one everyone’s nightmares lead to and who kills someone irreplaceable with just one bullet less than a cent. The sound of silence was extremely annoyed to me, such as the opposite way of extremely loud, and none of them could comfort my heart. In Friedrich Nietzsche’s book Beyond Good and Evil, he once said “He who fights with monsters should be careful lest he thereby become a monster. And if thou gaze long into an abyss, the abyss will also gaze into thee” (146). What Nietzsche means here is that do not let us become to a monster, although it is the easiest ways to kill all other monsters, and the darkness in the abyss would make us more appreciative of lightness. This relates to the feng shui tips that Walden has written in her book, in the sense that I declared and meditated for not becoming to the monster and enjoying the lightness.

According to feng shui tip that relates to my physical surroundings, I covered my electronic appliances with a swatch of attractive fabric (Walden 28 – “Sight”), and I placed an air purifier in the room for creating white noise which helps me to sleep (29 – “Sound”). I also used the jasmine aromatherapy to reduce my stress (29 – “Smell”). I set the air temperature was just right for me (30 – “Touch”) and stay away from drinking fruit juice in the night because sugar creates an unpleasant aftertaste that will affect my dreams (30 – “Taste”). After I changed my surrounding environment followed by Walden’s feng shui tips, I wrote down my declaration on a piece of paper. I repeated my declaration in my mind as many as I can while I was medicating with my eyes closed in my bed. After a while, I felt that everything surrounded me was frozen, for instance, the rotation of the earth, the air, the time and every single object in this three-dimensional world. I felt I was drawn into the maelstrom of a black hole which nothing can escapes. After black hole decomposed me, it started to rebuild me as a one tiny creation in the immense universal. I became to one made anew from inside out, and this renewal springs pours and refills energy into my heart. After I finished the meditation, I opened my eyes and went to bed.

I had my “battle field” dream again in that night, and by following Walden’s lessons of declaration, meditation and feng shui tips, everything went to different directions. I was again in the prone position, and I did not feel anything dangerous. The eagle was still wheeling above me, but I did not feel the loneliness at all. I relaxed my neck on the green ground. Instead of smelling the burning, I smelt the grass, a smell of sweet in a distinct vegetable type, like the smoothies of cucumber and orange. One little dew stuck on my lip, and it tasted as a freshness, a natural wrapping upon the gift of a new day (Web). I cannot take my eyes off from the dews laden by grass because of those silvery sheen dews reflected the infinite universe through by the little tiny liquid carrier. I heard a song that was sung by sky “somewhere, over the rainbow”, and the voice was charming enough to heal me, to release me from fear and loneliness. I gradually stood up and warily stepped on the floor. At the moment, I never felt so secure such as one infant who just starts to use his/her legs on his/her own pace of lives.

By following Walden’s dream lessons, my “repeating nightmare” is not bothering me anymore. I have stopped muttering about guns and friends departed while I was sleeping, and I have not woken up at nighttime with eyes terrifying opened. I stood up in the battlefield, the battlefield of self-versus-self in my dream, and I overcame the restricted area that I would never gather enough courage for even trying.

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